Woman computing pioneer wins prize

Former UC Berkeley math student Barbara Liskov, whose 1968 Stanford Ph.D. in computer science was the first such degree ever awarded to a woman in the United States, has won a $250,000 prize from the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).

Liskov, who has been an MIT professor since 1972, won the ACM’s Turing Award for a series of fundamental contributions to modern computer science. The award is named for British mathemaician Alan M. Turing, who helped lay the groundwork for computing with his code-breaking research during World War II.

The ACM praised Liskov for such conceptual breakthroughs as finding ways to organize complex programs and, more recently, her efforts to make software more resistant to errors and hacking.

“Every time you exchange e-mail with a friend, check your bank statement online or run a Google search, you are riding the momentum of her research,” said MIT Provost L. Rafael Reif.

The Turing Award, sometimes called the Nobel Prize of computing, is underwritten by Google and Intel. “It was my pleasure to learn from Professor Liskov as an MIT graduate student,” said Intel director of research Andrew Chien.